Hemispheric Indigeneities: Native Identity and Agency in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Canada, edited by Miléna Santoro and Erick D. Langer, was born out of the symposium, “Becoming Indigenous, Asserting Indigeneity,” held at Georgetown University in 2013. The collection explores Indigenous sovereignty and agency in these three diverse locales. The editors have chosen a roughly chronological structure for the collection, splitting it into four parts: First Contacts, First Nations, Indigenous Survival and Selfhood in the Long Nineteenth Century, Asserting Indigeneity in the Contemporary Era, and a postface titled “Indigenous Experiences and Legacies.” In the introduction Santoro and Langer argue that Indigeneity is a social construct and positioning that is best viewed “as a process rather than a static category” (xiii). The introduction provides background on how distinct colonial and national governments created different conditions for Indigenous peoples in the three regions featured in the collection. As such, the introduction is a valuable resource for anyone looking at issues regarding Indigeneity in the Western Hemisphere.
In the first selection, “The Early Colonial Origins of Indigeneity in and around the Basin of Mexico,” Susan Kellogg discusses the use of the term indio by the Indigenous peoples of the Basin. Using colonial period documents, Kellogg argues that those who were considered by the Spanish as indio recognized that the term could be employed to their benefit in courts, especially in cases of land disputes. Susan Elizabeth Ramírez’s contribution, “Existing Ancestralities and the Failure of Colonial Regimes,” provides a look at the ethnic plurality of the Andean region before the period of the conquest through the eighteenth century. Ramírez shows how Indigenous Andeans, who were once united under the Cuzcos, resisted the cultural and religious changes that the Spanish attempted to institute.
David T. McNab, in “‘We Do the Same Thing among Ourselves’: Becoming Indigenous in Atlantic Canada,” departs from the preceding authors by offering less of an examination of the concept of Indigeneity with regard to the Mi’kmaq nation in favor of a detailed history of their interaction with the French and later English colonists. McNab asserts the sovereignty of the Mi’kmaq and highlights their methods of resistance since the colonial period. Luis Fernando Granados discusses the significant decline in Indigenous peoples in Mexico and Guatemala in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in his contribution, “Everything Must Change so that Everything Can Stay the Same: Miscegenation, Racialization, and Culture in Modern Mesoamerica.” Granados advances the argument that such a genocide was more epistemological than physical, caused by shifting definitions of who was considered indio by the state.
Erick D. Langer’s contribution, “From Prosperity to Poverty: Andeans in the Nineteenth Century,” provides an overview of the Indigenous Andeans’ participation in the economy during the nineteenth century. He argues that instead of seeing Indigenous Andeans as always economically disenfranchised, more attention should be paid to the early part of the nineteenth century and the way in which Indigenous Andeans participated in, and in some cases dominated certain sectors of, the economy.
Karl S. Hele’s “Nation Making / Nation Breaking: ‘Effective Control’ of Aboriginal Lands and Peoples by Settlers in Transition,” explores the complex relation between two burgeoning nations, the United States and Canada, and the Anishinaabe and Métis of the Sault region. Hele details the concept of “effective control” to highlight how the United States and (later) Canada worked to make and unmake the Anishinaabe and Métis as either British Indians or American Indians. Hele largely focuses on treaties as well as governmental regulations to define who is and who is not a British or American Indian, while discussing the ways in which Anishinaabe and Métis peoples of the Sault region fought back against these forced identities and land seizure.
In her contribution, “Asserting Indigeneity in Contemporary Mexico and Central America: Autonomy, Rights, and Confronting Nation-States,” Lynn Stephen argues that moves to establish autonomy have marked Indigenous organizing in Mesoamerica over the last few decades. She argues this through case studies in Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Through these studies, Stephen argues that in order to establish autonomy, Indigenous peoples are often working outside of the boundaries of the nation-state or directly against the nation-state.
In “Against Coloniality: Andrés Jach’aqullu’s Indigenous Movement in the Era of Bolivian National Revolution of 1952,” Waskar T. Ari-Chachaki provides an overview of the organizing of activist Andrés Jach’aqullu from his early years through the 1970s in order to argue that Jach’aqullu’s specific calls for Indigenous autonomy significantly influenced subsequent movements in the late twentieth century. Ari-Chachaki’s contribution provides a thorough overview of the career of Jach’aqullu as an activist and how he influenced contemporary activism in Bolivia.
In “Reel Visions: Snapshots from a Half Century of First Nations Cinema,” Miléna Santoro examines visual sovereignty in the last sixty years of cinema directed by Indigenous artists in Canada. Santoro discusses the work of key Indigenous filmmakers, such as Alanis Obomsawin, and how they have established visual sovereignty through their work. She focuses not only on the content featured in these films but on how the director’s manipulation of the camera creates visual sovereignty.
In the final contribution to the volume, “Travels of a Métis through Spirit Memory, around Turtle Island and Beyond,” David T. McNab explores the spirit memory as a Métis way of knowing and how together with oral and written accounts, the Métis can tell their story. McNab’s contribution is an excellent way to end a collection that focuses on indigeneities throughout the Western Hemisphere as McNab takes the reader to islands in his memory—physical islands throughout the hemisphere where significant events in his life have taken place. He shares these stories with the reader in an effort to build a document that not only models writing Métis history but also provides a metacommentary on such writing.
One of the strengths of this collection is that the articles reference one another, providing critical links between the geographic regions and highlighting areas of similarity and difference between Indigenous agency and activism in diverse locales. The range of contributions with regard to content, writing style, and sources used makes the edited collection Hemispheric Indigeneities an excellent text for a course in contemporary Indigenous studies and one that would be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of folklore, history, theatre, literary studies, and anthropology.
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[Review length: 1055 words • Review posted on November 21, 2019]